Slashdot Mirror
Russia Plans To Divert Asteroid
CyberDong writes "Roscosmos, Russia's Federal Space Agency, will start working on a project to save planet Earth from a possible collision with Asteroid Apophis, which may happen in 2036. NASA specialists believe that the collision is extremely unlikely. Russian specialists will choose the strategy and then invite the world's leading space agencies to join the project."
When they take an asteroid that's not likely to hit Earth, and accidentally divert it onto a path directly at Earth, I'm going to do an epic facepalm.
Is the ability to divert asteroids.
Wonderful weapon, just massive blast damage and no residual radiation.
NASA: Listen, there's no way that thing is going to hit us.
Roscosmos: Naturally, since we're diverting it. Thank you for your vote of confidence, American pigs.
my prediction we throw everything we have at it and only moves one inch. who is with me?
You hit Aster... wait.
In Soviet Russia, Asteroid hits Y...
I've been defeated.
"Everything will be done according to the laws of physics."
That's what they all say...
It's just another way of diverting the flow of government money into a few carefully chosen pockets. As is the nano-technology research program, and the snow-free winters mentioned earlier today. Think about it: an open-ended grant with no accountability for a quarter century - and likely ever? They'll get a couple government defaults and an odd coup in between, who's going to care about the small stuff.
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
Actually, it sounds like Perminov has no idea what he's talking about to begin with, so it seems unlikely that this will go anywhere. Consider this quote, from the original AP article:
Without mentioning NASA's conclusions, Perminov said that he heard from a scientist that Apophis is getting closer and may hit the planet. "I don't remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032," Perminov said.
Note that the NASA conclusion is that, no, there will be no strike in 2032 and unlikely in 2036. It sounds like he's a bureaucrat trying to make himself important by making up a job. That doesn't bode well for the projecting going anywhere.
(Phil Plait has talked about this, too.)
Who can we get to do the soundtrack?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Science? Schmience!!
Who do we think should take Liv Tyler's place when they film this sequel??
We have met the enemy and he is us - Pogo (Walt Kelly)
Can we send annoying actors on a mission to land on this asteroid, drill down into it, and make it blow up? Oh, and can we have one of those guys have to stay behind to detonate it? Better yet, make them all have to stay behind.
SSC
Even if Apophis has no chance of hitting Earth, attempting to divert the asteroid farther from Earth may have value as a test of our ability to do so. I would however, prefer that they did such a test on an asteroid that is not due to pass so close to Earth any time soon.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
can't you just call the assguard?
Having lived for most of my life in the "east" under Communism, I am sure that this announcement is hot air...along the lines of nationalistic-pride type of goals that both the U.S. and USSR used to pump out on a regular basis during the cold war. Russia can barely keep up with paying their military bills; their nuclear subs are barely staying afloat and space program is not doing well; it's unthinkable that in this economic climate they will spend the kind of money required to accomplish this.
Roscosmos, Russia's Federal Space Agency, will start working on a project to save planet Earth from a possible collision with Asteroid Apophis
This would be the same people who just tried to engineer a winter without snow in Russia, with mixed results.
Now they're going to try diverting an asteroid.
What could go wrong?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Ah, shades of Armageddon. That wonderful movie where they so realistically portray space missions so weight critical that they bring friggin miniguns along with them. What they really need is some space faring Sharks with Lasers on their heads. That should fix it!!!!!
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
90% chance of a 1 megaton asteroid hitting vs 10% chance of a 27 megaton asteroid hitting. I would take the first one myself.
CyberDong writes "Roscosmos, Russia's Federal Space Agency, will start working on a project to save planet Earth from a possible collision with Asteroid Apophis
....
I don't think the news is that another asteroid is coming to crush us - the problem is that vibrators have apparently obtained sentience!*
* at least enough to post on slashdot.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
http://www.hulu.com/watch/80885/stargate-sg-1-fail-safe#x-0,vepisode,1,0
although apophis was the name of the one that sent the asteroid not the asteroid
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
They blast the fuck out of it, announce a successful diversion, have a big party, and go home. In 2036 the thing turns Moscow into a giant crater. Just cuz it rolls like dat.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Asteroids get smashed by YOU!
Too awkward, and only useful for a single strike.
The radiation issue is a trifle. Atmospheric testing demonstrated that a single massive blast won't cause enough radiation to matter to an attacker willing to use a nuke in the first place. The total number of atmospheric test blasts amounts to a smallish nuclear war, proving such a war is quite practical.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Also, this. Looks like Russia has a lot more at stake then America does.
( In before [citation needed] )
They 'retrofitted secret military space shuttles', so really (in the context of the movie), the mission was so important that they didn't take (the time to pull) them out.
If you are going to criticize the inconsistencies present in sci-pablum, it makes a lot more sense to criticize the internal inconsistencies, not the inconsistencies with your expectations.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Even if this asteroid is not going to hit Earth, I think it's time to test drive some solutions to an inevitable problem with terrifying consequences.
As a bonus, we might actually advance science and technology!
I recognize the irony in asking this question as I am an American; however, shouldn't there be a little more discussion from the rest of the planet when dealing with the potential of a huge asteroid destroying the planet if someone calculates a trajectory incorrectly?
Entropy just isn't what it used to be.
Good news Russia successfully diverted Apophis! The bad news is it's no longer going to miss the Earth.
until someone clears up the odds of that asteroid hitting a goat.
In Soviet Russia, the asteroid diverts you!
Might take away some of the risks others have already mentioned...
Need an ISP in South Africa?
If the asteroid scores a direct hit on earth in 2036, the Y2038 problem then becomes the least of our worries.
"Always look at the bright side of life"
- Eric Idle, "Life of Brian"
- Jack Nicholson, "As Good as it Gets"
Science fiction is sometimes written on the basis of "if this goes on" or "taken to the extreme". Guardian writes theirs by taking things like offhand comments made on a radio show about someone should do something like this because it'd be a good idea, and changed it to committing a country's space program to actually doing so.
Guardian has published similar articles before and invariably doesn't even bother to cover its tracks. If plans were actually being made to carry out such a program, it is highly unlikely that a target would have been selected. And if one had been selected, it would probably have been one of the dozens of known NEOs with greater cumulative impact probabilities than Apophis. And/or rather than risk failure when success was required, would have first conducted a test mission on a rock where neither failure nor accidental retargeting would result in Earth impact, and with a small enough mass that a smaller project could have a chance of succeding. And in any case, if any actual plans were being made within the Russian space agency, its head would know more about the details such as actual perigee dates.
And just in case readers can't concentrate on science alone for the length of the article, or might not understand it if not placed in a more familiar context, Guardian manages to insert three different science fiction references. Slashdotters who do so rarely insert more than one, even when the length of their post is greater than the ~650 words of TFA.
At least by making themselves out to be irresponsible, they can avoid being expected to print retraction, corrections and/or apologies. At the rate they generate cause for such, if they were to be taken seriously, at least one full issue per year would consist solely of these.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
and not need it, than to need one and have no plan. If all they're talking about is brainstorming, let them do it. It costs very little in the grand scheme of things to sit and consider your options.
How much you wanna bet this will involve Putin, a gun, and a film crew?
#DeleteChrome
Who knew the overflow of a 32bit integer could cause an asteroid to hit earth.
How about a 100% chance of it hitting the moon.
I think that we can arrange it. I would definitely prefer to have my tax dollar spent making something cool like that happen, rather than spend it on bailouts or diverting it directly into the pockets of the health insurance industry.
"His name was James Damore."
Even if it is from a very unlikely event.... mmmm... interesting.
Dear
Why are the Russians wasting their time to come up with a solution for this problem?! The United States Air Force already has something in place to take care of Apophis.
It's called SG-1. It's a four-man special operations unit, working out of the top secret Stargate Command, located under Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The team consists of Colonel Jack O'Neill, Maj. Samantha Carter, Dr. Daniel Jackson, and former first prime of Apophis and a member for the Jaffa alien species, Teal'c.
Just give Lt. Gen. Hammond a ring and he'll send them in. SG-1 will have this taken care of by tomorrow. No problem!!
65 million years ago they didn't care about 'roids either...
explosions make great trailers
...but won't do it to actually prevent it from happening. If there is a small chance that this may hit us, we should prepare. And if it doesn't, we have a perfect chance to practice. Do you really want to wait until a meteor is coming dead center to find out if we can figure out how to divert it?
How fast does this approaching Earth? Can we park it in geosync for an elevator? We should have the nanoropes by then.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Once upon a time, Russia had the best Chess players of the world. Now will be have the Billiards ones.
We all know the horrible death and destruction that it would cause, but would a meteor impact bring any positive side effects? Has anyone ever stop to consider this?
Maybe we could pay for the mission with carbon credits?! Seriously, it's almost like the Russians, who are big-time global warming deniers, are throwing the whole global mission to save the earth at any cost canard right back at the west, except this time all the money from the global government arrangement goes to Russian space research.
we won't have to worry about the Unix 2038 problem.
"Roscosmos, Russia's Federal Space Agency, will start working on a project to save planet Earth from a possible collision with Asteroid Apophis"
I predict this will accomplish roughly the same as the last fifty seven space spectaculars announced with much fanfare by Rovkosmos - roughly zip point nada.
Something bumps into another thing in the oort cloud, and sends a comet towards Earth. We'll see it at about the orbit of Saturn (probably found by an amateur), and we'll have about two years -max- to kiss our asses goodbye.
Got to send up Aerosmith while you are at it.
I don't foresee Republican support for saving the American people from an asteroid. Their argument would be that if you save them from one, they'll expect to be saved from the next one, and there we go again: More "entitlement spending".
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
How about they divert snow from Moscow first?
Isn't Russia heavily controlled by the mob? "Nice planet you have here, comrade. Would be shame if anything broken, yes? Maybe you pay us, we protect you from asteroid?"
We already have proof they've succeeded. The solution they arrived at was to send half the asteroid back in time approximately 100 years.
Well done guys! Break out the champagne.
--
Toro
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Everyone is ignoring that in every Asteroid impact film the president was black.
Once you land the mass accelerators you have a heck of a weapon. "What, it's on course to hit Washington, DC? Oops our bad. Oh well too late now."
The question to me is: is there a bigger chance of Apophis hitting Earth than the chance of catastrophic climate change due to anthropogenic global warming? Because that has the western world's attention and money, and Apophis does not.
Why does everyone focus on the anthropogenic and not on the catastrophic? I mean, isn't it worth our while to research ways to prevent/ameliorate catastrophic climate change no matter what the cause?
Sweet. Now we won't have to worry about Unix clocks overflowing.
I think that this is a good idea but for a different reason this is just the first step in astroid handeling and could lead to astroid capture. Allowing humans to harvest them for metals and other useful things.
"Drive Fast Kill Slow"
Sounds like a noble project the US just might have been involved with back in the day when it was still a respectable nation run by it's people for the people instead of the corporate governance mess it has today that couldn't care less about saving lives of the masses.
The article should have said: "Russian specialists will choose the strategy and then invite the world's leading space agencies to pay for it."
That's nice that the Russians want to think about these problems, but since they don't have the money or resources to actually DO anything about it, this is just a publicity stunt. It's on the same level as a few Caltech grad students sitting around and sketching out solutions on a whiteboard.
Advice: on VPS providers
Alien 1: [Ahhh!!] We're all gonna die!!!
Alien 2: [Scream!!] We've been hit by a planet!!!
First off, guys, don't try and just nuke it. You'll still have asteroid coming at you, just smaller pieces. (In space, this is actually better (it'd burn up in the atmosphere better). On Earth, it wouldn't mean shit.)
Of course, who wants to bet there's a naquadah reactor on the asteroid? You gotta use the hyperspace drive to jump it through the planet!
I definitely see this as just another in a looong series of similar irrelevant (as such) stunts only aimed at bolstering russians' image of their own country. For a decade or so the Russian media has been trying to paint a picture of Russia as the good savior of all mankind, secretly thwarting the evil plans of "America". They are a sick bunch, still just beginning to recover from WWII and Stalin's iron fist that killed tens of millions of their own people.
I feel sorry for them.
-Mikael from Finland
1) What happens if you screw up? The calculations you do are wrong, or the system doesn't work as planned etc and instead, the asteroid is moved on to a collision path. Well now we are in for a world of hurt. This isn't the kind of thing that an "Oops, we messed up," would be ok in and let's not pretend like that doesn't happen.
2) The knowledge gained might not be all that useful in general. How we deal with deflecting an impact depends on a lot of things including how early we know about it and what angle it'll come at and so on. So a solution for a case like this, where we have decades of advanced knowledge, might be rather worthless for a situation where we have only a year.
3) It'll cost a ton. Missions to space aren't cheap even when we are just traveling to orbit or our moon using existing technology. It'll be extremely expensive to design something new, send it out to meet this asteroid and deflect it. That really isn't worth it, given that we have plenty of other problems here on Earth that we could do to spend resources on.
Testing is fine when the cost is reasonable, the data is useful, and a fuckup doesn't cause any problems outside of the test. None of those are true in this case.
This asteroid may not pose a threat. But another one might sooner or later. So even if it does not make much sense in terms of actual threat now, I guess, it is a good opportunity to gather data on projects like this. Or to say in another way: Do you really want to wait till an asteroid is discovered, which will hit the earth for sure and then start thinking and developing?
It's not really an asteroid, but a huge metal cylinder. Watch it.
ESA also has a mission concept for asteroid deflection from 2005, called Don Quijote...
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/NEO/SEMZRZNVGJE_0.html
There will be plenty of radiation when your target launches a nuclear strike in response.
NO, there is a bigger chance to be hit by an asteroid than to win a lottery.
Is there really? Estimates of this based on historical data would have us hit by an asteroid big enough to make dinosaurs go extinct once every... 70 million years (or so, look it up if you want correct numbers). So it is perhaps about as likely to be hit by one in a given year as a given ticket winning the lottery (depending on how big a lottery). However, if we assume that such an asteroid would kill 7 billion people if it did hit, we can also say that catastrophic asteroid impact kills on average 100 people a year... not a highly impressive number, probably less people than are killed by flying debris http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0EY86At7qs each year, but still pretty high considering that there is hardly any historical record of a man being killed by an asteroid impact.
Earth is far too valuable to just let it disintegrate from an asteroid collision. Surely one of the many alien species monitoring us will either divert it for us if we cannot, or come in afterwards and colonize whatever is left.
The Unix date 2038 problem doesn't need to be solved if we're all getting smashed to bits two years earlier.
... and moreover, if they lead, they'll recuperate all the knowledge (a bit like the US do for future Mars missions with Esa ;-)
Herve S.
... the fact that Apophis just has no chance to hit us is, I fear, irrelevant. Even though its trajectory has been known for years to be safe (and safer with the latest measurements), what seems to count now is the psycho-TV impact of the announcements.
So, "saving us from Doom" is of course much more efficient than real scientific activity, 'more' like in 'more capable to gather money' presumably.
To some extent this is not unlike the current rush for EXOPLANETS in the related Astronomy field. People seem to consider you'll dream better of Earth-like planets (unusable objects that lie unreachable thousands of light-years away) rather than considering actually useful scientific experiments.
One of the most striking story on that point was the french COROT satellite, initially set to study our sun's convection and rotation modes (thus the name: Co-Rot, and a real interest to us), then someone discovered the same instrument also could be used to detect exoplanets, then half of the satellite payload was accurately adapted for this, then in the french space agency it has become THE exoplanet chaser. It's to the point I'm now wondering if the science of the sun is actually taking place in parallel. Never heard of it.
The worst of it is, everyone agrees (myself included!!) that the Corot mission would never have been funded uo to the end without this exoplanet stuff...
To some extent we don't need 'the Bell curves' to find cynism in Science :-/
Herve S.
The planet has over 6 billion people. With lotteries having odds in the hundreds of millions to one, of course a few will win. The chance of Apophis hitting Earth is 1 in 250,000. There is one Earth, it's not the same fish-in-a-barrel kind of situation as some random person on Earth winning a lottery.
Since you obviously can't fathom how little that is, imagine there is a room with a quarter million little test tubes on the floor (stay with me here, imagine it's the Boeing assembly building if it helps). One contains a virus that will obliterate all mankind when released. The world's governments are, uh, forced by Dr. Evil to either open a random test tube or fork over billions of dollars. Which would you recommend? I'd say in a heartbeat, open one. Why? Because the risk is so very, very low.
Let me also put this in more practical terms. If 1 in 5 people die in car accidents and you do the equivalent of 40 years' worth of daily driving (assuming 2 trips per day), your chance of dying any given time you get in your car is 1 in 146,000 (365*40*2*5).
Now, are you ever going to drive again?
If so I hope you will also stop playing the lottery and making such idiotic analogies.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
then maybe we can get them to straighten the tower of pisa.
Then get robo Lincoln to kick there ass.
Gen. Hammond is dead and Jack is a Gen now Carter is also a Colonel now.
Russians have deflects an astroid that won't hit Earth in 2036 causing it to take up a new trajectory that will hit Moscow in 2012. News at 11.
> How about a 100% chance of it hitting the moon. Hitting the moon and knocking it out of orbit. We have the plot for the remake of Space 1999! We just need to add some bad science to the mix... Hummm, it crashes into a fusion reactor which combines with some unusual element that causes the moon to fall thru a wormhole at random times, pausing just long enough to explore new worlds every week. Space 2036! Of course that sounds a bit like Stargate Universe if you replace the moon with an ancient ship dropping out of hyperspace every week.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
It seems like the thing for the Russians to do is to buy lottery tickets under the name of the asteroid. That way, if the asteroid 'hits,' then everybody in Russia is rich. No problem.
...pronouncement out of Russia sound like the ramblings of a paranoid, a tyrant, a drunk, or some weird combination of all of them?
Yeah!
GEOBALLISTICS EXPERIMENTS FOR THE WIN!
The whole intertubewebnet, though it were turned to uppercase and made like a dumptruck, could not convey my excitement and pleasure at this scheme!
At the risk of parroting: I think this is an excellent and rare chance for us to get in some ?real world?, ?field work? (not on the world or a field) of any of the ideas we've all imagined.
Original Thought (I hope): I just want them to start messing with the trajectory(s) AFTER it passes Earth on it's own.
Has anyone thought of attaching a probe to this or any other asteroids? Seems like it would be a good way to do some exploration using the momentum of the asteroid.
In the world of space business, a little "political focus" helps to round up resources such as personnel and technologies, which might otherwise not be developed. "Diverting an asteroid" is a political focus. One benefit might be global survival, but the other benefits should also be considered, like developing the ability to park an iron-nickel asteroid in near-earth orbit for astro-mining to develop interstellar spacecraft and L5 habitats. While NASA has been focused on the very far, ROSCOSMOS seems to have remembered that cost-of-production can be a direct function of distance. If Apophis will approach within the moon's orbit, why not figure out how to grab it and park it where Soyuz and Ares can easily get to it every weekday. Now that would be an interesting catch and the beginning of a real space economy!
DarkStarZumaBeachSurfinApocalypseWow
Certain Russians are talking about potential plans to divert the asteroid. Russians are also talking about curbing alcoholism, corruption and a variety of other Utopian ideas. With the price of oil remaining relatively low, and space tourism all but eliminated, the Russians do not have the resources to do anything but talk.
Absolutely. But if global warming is not caused by mankind then our research into stopping the supposed man-based causes of it is not best directed. If we've ploughed all our efforts into reducing our Carbon Dioxide output and then we learn that it's due to some solar cycle and the effect of CO2 is minimal, then that's a huge waste of time when we could have been doing something else. Also, if we have misjudged the causes of global warming, how can we predict what is actually going to happen and plan for it?
I must thank you and Golddess, your posts have triggered an "ah-ha!" moment in my thinking about this problem. When reading your post, it became clear that we aren't going to know (as in "know scientifically") in the near future if the current global warming is caused by C02 or by some other unknown factor or both. That will take hundreds (if not thousands) of years.
I admit to being a big fan of Bruce Schneier, and realize now that his arguments about what is the best way to spend money to fight terrorism also apply to the problem of global warming. In the case of terrorism, Schneier makes the apt point that we can never outguess the next terrorist plot, so it pays to invest a lot of the money currently being wasted on "magical thinking" (i.e., prevent-the-last-plot-and-everything-will-be-OK) on contingency planning for disaster management. Since similarly to terrorism we aren't going to know all of the causes which might lead to catastrophic global warming (although CO2 seems like a good candidate as one of the causes), so we should instead focus on trying to understand how bad the problem is likely to get and how we might be able to either stop/modify it with engineering or (as Golddess points out) plan for how to adapt to new situations which might develop.
In 36 years technology would be more advanced and we would have more precise data on asteroid track. This is just another showmanship move to keep the people happy and in line.